Chapter 18
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Just as Doreen was ready to leave, she added, “Listen. I know this is also a difficult topic, but the fact that your mother was murdered adds another aspect to these crimes.”
Jillian groaned. She turned back from walking Doreen to the door to sit back down again.
“The fact that my mother was also murdered just makes it all so much worse for me,” she admitted, crying out in pain.
“That was an unbelievable time, and I just …” She groaned.
“I can’t imagine again going through all that I’ve gone through already,” she wailed, with tears in her eyes.
“That was one of the most godawful times in my life.”
“And your father is not in the picture?”
“No, he hasn’t been in the picture since forever,” she noted. “I don’t even know if he’s alive.”
“It would be nice to know more about that,” Doreen said, turning to look at the uncle.
Zev nodded. “It would be nice, but nobody has found out anything about him. I certainly haven’t heard or seen anything of him in a very long time.”
Doreen continued. “And I know it’s a difficult topic, but the fact that now three murders have happened in the same family is quite remarkable. I’m counting your fiancé as family, of course,” Doreen explained. “That experience is a trigger for you, whether they’re connected or not.”
“They can’t be connected,” Jillian argued. “My mother was killed a long time ago.”
“I get that,” Doreen said, “and I’m so sorry. It’s also got to be hard on your uncle.” She turned to Zev.
“That’s both of his sisters gone now,” Jillian whispered.
His face pale and drawn, he looked over at Doreen.
“It’s been just brutal losing Katie ten years ago, and now Alice,” he murmured.
“You think you can finally start to heal from the one loss, but then a second one happens. You just wonder if you’ve got a target on your back,” he muttered.
“That’s a horrible way to look at life. It was such a long time before Jillian would even live alone. ”
“And then,” Jillian shared, “I didn’t even really live alone for very long because I went …
I hate to say it, but I went from relationship to relationship, trying to figure out who and what I was and where I was safe.
So, it may not have been the ideal methodology for growing up, but, after my mom’s murder, I was never really comfortable being alone. ”
“Like never?” Doreen asked.
“No, I lived with Uncle Zev for quite a while, and then I felt as if I needed to get out and to be an adult again,” she explained, tears in her eyes. “It’s just not that easy after a murder like that. And now? … I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Doreen nodded. “As you look back on your mother’s murder, is there anything that comes to mind?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing. Believe me that I spent a decade trying to sort through it, and I just had no idea. It was really traumatizing growing up that way,” she murmured. “If it weren’t for Uncle Zev, I don’t know what I would have done.”
Doreen nodded. “I’m so sorry. That’s got to be tough. Were there any suspects at the time?”
“Why are you looking at that murder?” Zev asked in frustration. “It has no bearing on this one now.”
“Are you sure about that?” she asked, turning to face him. “Just the fact that this many murders happened in the same family means that chances are good there is some connection. And the MO in all cases was also similar.”
“You can make up as many connections as you want,” Zev snapped, “but that doesn’t mean that they exist.”
Doreen didn’t say anything at first, just studied him for a long moment. “I understand it’s a touchy topic.”
“Of course it is,” he snarled. “Why wouldn’t it be? We’re sitting here drowning in a sea, completely overtaken by … evil.”
“Yes, of course,” she murmured. She turned to Jillian again. “Did your mother have a boyfriend back then?”
“Sure,” Jillian said, “but it’s not as if she flaunted them. I wasn’t a part of that aspect of her life.”
“Okay, so you have no idea who might have done it?”
“No, I have no idea,” she declared, with a wave of her hand.
Zev interrupted, “And if you try to drag that murder into this one …”
“The police have already got the information on Katie’s murder,” Doreen told Zev. “And that isn’t something you can hide. So, the sooner we can clear up one connection as not being connected at all,” she pointed out for Zev’s benefit, “the easier it will be on everyone.”
Zev just glared at her.
Jillian groaned. “I don’t have a clue why anybody would even begin to think it was connected.”
“Because that’s the reality of life. Most families don’t lose anyone to murder. So, as soon as anything is suspect, our natural tendency is to dig deeper and deeper into it.”
“Are you sure you’re not doing the same thing but out of curiosity?” Uncle Zev snarled, staring daggers at her.
She turned to him. “No, that’s not what I do, but I can see that, for the moment at least, you’ve had enough of my questions.
” She got up and clucked at the back of her throat for the animals.
They all stood up, and together they walked to the door.
“I’m sorry for the need to ask these questions,” she said, “but I felt it was important that we clear the air on the matter.”
“I don’t know what we could possibly have cleared,” Jillian replied, staring at her. “We didn’t get any answers.”
“No, and there are definitely a few more questions I could really use the answers to, just so I can write it off.”
“Like what?” Jillian cried out.
Doreen turned to the uncle, still at the doorway. “Did you live near your sister Katie in Alberta?”
“Yes, we all lived close by.”
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“No, I didn’t hear anything. I was out with Jillian.”
Doreen nodded and looked over at Jillian. “Were other people around you?”
“Yes,” she snapped, glaring from Doreen to Zev. “It was a birthday party, and we had all gone together.”
“And where was the party held?”
“I don’t know, maybe ten minutes away at a bowling alley,” she murmured. “And, when we came home, the lights were off, which was unusual since my mother should have been there.”
Doreen turned her attention back to Zev. “I guess one of the questions I have is why you took her to the birthday party and not her mother.”
There was a moment of silence, and Zev looked over at his niece. “I took her to a lot of things.”
“So it wasn’t Jillian’s birthday then.”
“No, no, it was her friend’s birthday. They needed more adults, so I volunteered. And, even back then, I was heavily involved in her life.”
Doreen just smiled and nodded. As she got to the front door, she asked, “Are you involved with the family restaurant too?”
Zev shook his head. “I helped when I was younger, but no. I chose a different career path.”
Doreen noted his tone remained clipped. Was it because she had overstayed her visit or was there some animosity regarding the family restaurant? “And what kind of work do you do?”
He sighed. “I’m a contractor by trade, but now I serve as a consultant and do a lot of my work from home. For the last several years, I’ve devoted my life to helping my niece, so I haven’t worked full-time.”
“That’s very nice, but are you able to, … well, are you okay on money that way?”
“No, not particularly. No. … I inherited some money from my sister Katie, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That wasn’t what I was asking, but I guess it is one of the questions that needs to be answered.”
“Why?” he asked, frowning.
Doreen turned to Jillian. “Did you also get money from your mother? And, if so, what happened to that?”
Jillian nodded. “I sold the house, and I invested the money, and I haven’t really done anything with it.”
“But you told me that you were struggling.”
“I did say struggling. I don’t know that it was financial as much as just plain struggling emotionally, but I did the right thing.
I didn’t want to touch that money until I was ready to settle down, and that would go toward buying a house.
Neither Uncle Zev nor I got a lot of money, and I wanted to use my inheritance in a meaningful way, honoring my mother. ”
“And now,” Doreen said, as she turned to face the uncle, “with this other sister’s death, do you know who gets Alice’s money?”
“She has a husband, so I guess it would all go to him, … though maybe not. The Rocking Horse was her restaurant, not his. The Burgon family hands down our restaurants through the generations. So the business probably can’t go to him, but maybe to my brother or even me.”
She stopped, thought about that, and asked, “Your brother’s the artist, right?”
“Yes.” Then Zev gave half a laugh. “At least he calls himself an artist, though he doesn’t make any money. I know our sister Alice was forever helping him with handouts, and they also got a lot of their food from the restaurant just because they didn’t always have the money they needed.”
“Ah, so he’s really struggling too.”
“Yes, and I get it. I really do. He’s in a wheelchair, and his life hasn’t been the easiest.”
“What about his wife? Does she work?”
“No, she doesn’t work. She plays at helping out at the restaurant but she only irritated Alice, so that soon stopped. My sister-in-law is one of those people who’s after money all the time—of the handout variety.”
“But there is such a thing as a job.”
The niece laughed at that. “Now that’s the mess of our family for you. She thought Danny would inherit the restaurant when his father died, and there would be big money waiting for her.”
“They’ve been married for a long time, haven’t they?”
Jillian thought about it and nodded. “Yes, so she must have thought something was in it for her way back when. She’s not exactly the nicest of people.”
Doreen smiled. “Some people don’t seem to know how to be nice.”
Zev snorted. “And then some people just don’t want to, and that would be her. We have very little to do with her because she’s not anybody we want to spend time with.”
Doreen asked, “So, in your mind, would she have had anything to do with Alice’s death?”
Zev frowned at her. “Good God, I didn’t even consider that.”
“With your sister Alice gone and even some of the money coming to Danny, would that be enough to make Danny’s wife happy? Would it be just the money that she’s after? Would it be … What I’m asking is, will she gain from that and then divorce her husband or something?”
Zev frowned, shaking his head. “Danny gets a disability check each month, and they own their property, so—at least if she stays with him—they both have a house, but I don’t know their finances beyond that,” he shared, as he turned to look at Jillian, frowning.
“But none of that explains why Jillian’s Barry died. ”
“No, it doesn’t,” Doreen agreed. “And that is something we’ll have to sort out soon.”
“Good luck with that,” he muttered, “because you’ll never get a chance to talk to that woman. You might get to talk to Danny, but it won’t be easy to talk to his wife.”
“Ideally people make wills and plans for who gets what, like a restaurant, before those people die,” Doreen noted.
“I wouldn’t imagine that everyone would want the responsibility of running a restaurant.
So proper planning for a family legacy to continue makes these things a whole lot less painful. ”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “It just seems so awful that we’re even in this place.”
“But, as we well know, when people die, property frequently has to be sold so the proceeds can be divided,” Doreen noted. “One of the big things in any investigation involves following the money. So, who benefits from the deaths of Katie, Barry, and Alice?”
“Not me,” Jillian exclaimed, with a hysterical laugh. “At least not from my fiancé’s death. He didn’t have anything and was worth far more to me alive.”
“I’m sure he knew that and, in his final moments, was probably only concerned about keeping you safe.”
Jillian looked at her and then nodded. “He would have done that. It would have been so like him too. He was a gentle soul.”
“Maybe he was looking out for you at the end of the day.” Doreen turned to the uncle. “I know this sounds completely off topic, but considering it is now just you and your brother …”
Zev nodded.
“Considering the attacks on your siblings, you might want to take extra care of yourself.”
“Why?” he asked, giving her a stare.
“Because your family is dwindling rather quickly.”
And, with that, Doreen opened the front door and walked out.